This is the song that never lens

[dr4b]

You know that scene in the Wayne's World movie where he's been staring at this guitar over and over again and then when the show gets picked up by a network and they give him a bunch of money, he comes into the store and goes and buys the guitar?

I kind of feel like that with the 18-200 lens, only I'm not going to get paid a whole ton of money. But for some reason I do sort of feel like I really can't drop the money on this camera until I get my first paycheck from this current job. Which is a LITTLE silly because if I'm so sure I'll spend the money on it, then why not wait and get more use out of it? But... something about seeing the numbers in a bank account will really make me more comfortable, I think. But it's not going to happen until May 25 or so. Hrm.

Anyway, tonight after work I went to Akihabara (ugh) and looked for camera stores (without much luck; I think I should research online first). Did go into one used camera store and saw some relatively cheap lenses but I don't know if I trust them. I went into Sofmap and got really annoyed because this one Indian dude insisted on talking to me in English about some lenses despite that I not ONCE actually said a single word to him in English, and actually pretended to completely not understand him at all (ie, he was saying something like "ma'am, can I interest you in some of these lenses" or whatever, and I was just completely not responding as if I had no clue someone was talking to me). After I replied to him about five times in Japanese and stared at him blankly as he spoke to me in English (I'm getting rather good at this recently by just imitating my junior high school students), I finally just turned around and walked away from him and out of the store. They had the standard price for the 18-200 anyway, so no loss.

Either way, what I hate about these "English salespeople" is that they're basically there to accost white people and try to sell them things, because they automatically assume we're all tourists who have a lot of money. Also they assume all white people are tourists who speak English.

Bitterness aside, I eventually ended up at Yodobashi and just played with an 18-200 lens hooked up to a D300 for about 10 minutes. It's so nice, although I convinced myself not to buy one, this time because it's always slightly unsmooth to go from about 135mm to 200mm in the extension. But Jeff explained to me why that happened and said it's not a problem with the lens. Still. Ugh, I don't know what's wrong with me. I should just buy the fucking lens already. Does anyone with an 18-200 VR out there want to convince me one way or the other? It seems silly to buy anything but a Nikon lens, and it also seems like, in this case, it'd be silly to buy any other lens, since I want a combination wide/zoom.

Oh yeah, on the Bemani front, I played Jubeat today for the first time. I just hadn't bothered before. Won't bother again, it's pretty stupid. I played Pop'n after that and was happy. There's a Bemani arcade on the 6th floor of the Don Quixote in Akihabara, which has like 3 DDR machines and a fuckload of guitar/drums/etc machines.

Comments

[the2belo.livejournal.com]

You know what really pops my buttons? The signs all over the place in Akihabara that say OVERSEAS MODELS. Now if someone is going to travel 40 million miles across the solar system and end up in Tokyo, why in the blimmin' 'eck would he spend his cash on a digital camera made and sold to foreigners by foreigners that he could have bought for the same price back in Sheboygan, if only because he could say "I bought it in TOKYO LOOKLOOKLOOKLOOKLOOK"? Note that most of this stuff is made in China and has instruction manuals printed in 47,173 languages including Chinchilla, and the Japanese is mangled and has simplified Chinese characters in it. The goods are about as Japanese as my pancreas. What's the point?

Camera shops

[isamum.livejournal.com]

Keep your eye on the following link every evening. Map Camera rarely has used 18-200 mm lenses in stock because someone grabs them right away, but they do show up. You just have to be persistent.

http://www.mapcamera.com/sho/search.php?reset=on&top_search=1&top_search_from=1&MODE=M_VIEW&genre_id=4&keyword=&class=ALL&subGenreIdList[]=64&top_search_maker_id[]=Nikon&sea4.x=104&sea4.y=18

Or, if you want the best possible price on a new lens, you should check kakaku.com:

http://kakaku.com/shop/1787/PrdKey=10503511500/

Looks like 63,000 yen is as cheap as you can get and the only shop in Tokyo offering that is in Shinokubo.

On the negative side, because the 18-200mm extends and contracts so much it pushes a lot of air in and out. This results in a lot of dust accumulating inside the lens. My copy has a ton of gunk on the inner elements that are visible to the naked eye. It doesn't really affect the images unless I'm shooting into the sun (which I don't do with this lens), but if I did I'd probably get lots of flare or ghosts. This is a major weakness with all superzooms no matter how well sealed they are, and it reduces their resale value.

[ohhim.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine really loves his Tamron 18-270mm VR-equivalent super-zoom. Still, price is nearly identical to the 18-200mm Nikon so I'm not sure it is worth the premium.

[shandrew.livejournal.com]

The thing i found surprising about looking at camera stuff in Tokyo was that it was all priced higher than what American stores and online retailers charged. The vintage camera stores were neat, though.

If i took your kind of pictures, I would go for the 80-200 f/2.8 lens, especially if you ever plan to try to sell the photos.